5 days a week
Five walks a week build from 10 to 25 brisk minutes, with short faster bouts from week 3 and two easier days. Your step target starts from your own 3-day average and rises by 1,000 to 2,000 steps a day, rather than a fixed 10,000. Day 30 brings a retest and a clear next step.
Tap a day to open its session, with a follow-along player.
Every move links to its guide and 3D demo, with an easier and a harder option.
40 min · Beginner
25 min · Beginner
40 min · Beginner
50 min · Beginner
Days 1 to 3: carry your phone or step counter as usual to find your baseline. On day 1 or 2, time a usual route of about 1 km, or do the 6-minute walk test, to repeat on day 30. Walks: 5 easy minutes, 10 brisk, then a few easy; Saturday, 15 brisk. From day 4, aim for your baseline plus 1,000 steps a day as a weekly average. Can't manage 10 brisk minutes yet? Walk for 5, or walk, rest for a minute and go again. About 55 brisk minutes this week.
15 brisk minutes a walk; Saturday, 20. Thursday: the cadence check. During the brisk part, count your steps for a minute: about 100 steps a minute is moderate for most adults, and you should be able to talk but not sing. Step target: your baseline plus 1,500. About 80 brisk minutes.
20 brisk minutes a walk; Saturday, 25, on a gentle hill if you have one. Thursday: the build-up interval walk, 3 rounds of 2 minutes brisk, 30 seconds faster and 1 minute slow. Step target: your baseline plus 2,000. About 95 brisk minutes. Sessions: Build-up interval walk.
25 brisk minutes a walk; Saturday, 30. Thursday: the build-up interval walk, 4 rounds. Step target: hold at your baseline plus 2,000. About 120 brisk minutes. Day 29: rest or an easy stroll. Day 30: repeat your timed route or the 6-minute walk test, and take a new baseline from days 24 to 30.
Our walking plan from week 5 builds to 150 minutes a week with intervals, hills and two strength days. Or start running with Couch to 5K, join a free Ramblers Wellbeing Walk, or add more work without more speed with the incline walking workout. Sessions: Interval walking workout: 3 minutes fast, 3 minutes easy, Incline walking workout: hills or a treadmill slope.
Walk at a pace where you can still talk but couldn't sing: that's brisk, moderate effort, about 5 or 6 out of 10, where 0 is sitting still and 10 is the hardest you could go. The NHS puts a brisk walk at about 3 miles an hour. In studies, the point where talking first got harder matched a breathing threshold measured in the lab, so go by your breathing, and slow down on hills and hot days.
In week 2, check your pace: during the brisk part of a walk, count your steps for a minute. About 100 steps a minute was moderate effort for most adults aged 21 to 85 in lab studies, and 30 brisk minutes comes to about 3,000 steps. People vary, so the talk test leads and the count is a check.
On days 1 to 3, carry your phone or step counter as usual without changing anything: your average is your baseline. Steps vary from day to day, so 3 days is the least that gives a usable average, and a full week is better. From day 4, aim for your baseline plus 1,000 steps a day, then plus 1,500 in week 2 and plus 2,000 in weeks 3 and 4, as a weekly average rather than every day.
These increments are our editorial choice. Walking programmes typically add 2,000 to 2,500 steps a day, and having a step goal predicted success in a review of 26 studies. Goals that adapt to your own recent steps held up better than a fixed 10,000 a day, but that evidence is one trial of 96 people. The 10,000 figure itself traces to a slogan, and the links between steps and living longer come from observational studies.
Start every walk with about 5 easy minutes, building to brisk, and end with a few easy minutes (our suggestion, as in our walking plan). The calf and thigh stretches at the end are optional, for comfort.
Each week adds about 5 brisk minutes per walk, our editorial starting point, close to the pace of our walking plan. The World Health Organization advises starting small and building up gradually. If a week felt hard, or your legs or feet still ache the next morning, repeat it before moving on.
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Missed a walk? Carry on with the next one rather than doubling up. A shorter walk still counts: the UK guidelines say any activity is better than none, and minutes count in bouts of any length.
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Stop and call 999 (911 in the US) for chest pain that feels tight or squeezing or spreads to your arms, neck, jaw or back; chest pain with sweating, feeling sick, light-headedness or breathlessness; or severe difficulty breathing. Pain and swelling in one leg with breathlessness or chest pain needs 999 too, as it can be a blood clot; throbbing pain and swelling in one calf or thigh on its own needs an urgent GP appointment or NHS 111.
See a GP if your legs ache when you walk and the ache goes within a few minutes of stopping: it can be narrowed leg arteries. In hot weather, drink more, avoid the sun between 11am and 3pm and slow down. Call 999 if someone is still unwell after 30 minutes of cooling down, has hot skin that isn't sweating, or is confused.
Adults should aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, such as brisk walking, plus strength work on 2 or more days. Minutes count in bouts of any length, and any activity is better than none. The NHS says even a brisk 10-minute daily walk has health benefits, and NHS Better Health says walking briskly for even 1 minute counts as exercise.
This challenge builds from about 55 brisk minutes in week 1 to about 120 in week 4. Our walking plan carries on to 150.
In large studies, 7,000 steps a day went with a 47% lower risk of death than 2,000, with the biggest gains up to about 5,000 to 7,000 (57 studies). The benefit for death levelled off at about 6,000 to 8,000 a day over 60 and 8,000 to 10,000 under 60, and at about 7,500 in older women. Even reaching 8,000 steps on 1 or 2 days a week went with lower mortality in 3,101 US adults.
These are associations from observational studies: healthier people walk more. No guideline sets a step target, so the challenge builds on your own average instead.
People who said they walked at an average or brisk pace had 20 to 24% lower mortality than slow walkers, in 50,225 British adults. But in studies that measured steps with a device, faster stepping added little once total steps were counted. So the challenge builds steps and brisk minutes first, and adds short faster bouts from week 3 as an extra.
Walking programmes of 4 weeks or more raised fitness, lowered blood pressure by about 3.6/1.5 mmHg and took about 1.5 cm off the waist in 32 trials of inactive adults, though most ran longer than a month. Walking groups added about 80 metres to a 6-minute walk across 42 studies, and interval walking, 3 minutes fast and 3 slow, built leg strength and fitness more than steady walking over 5 months in 246 adults averaging 63.
So expect walks to feel easier and your timed route to get quicker; the bigger changes come over months, not weeks.
Walking programmes without a diet took off about 0.05 kg a week, so roughly 0.2 kg in a month. Across 116 trials in adults with overweight or obesity, clinically important changes in waist and body fat needed about 150 minutes of aerobic exercise a week or more, and European obesity guidance says to expect no more than 2 to 3 kg on average from exercise alone. Eating a little less does most of the work; see our weight loss plan.
In a UK trial of 1,023 inactive adults aged 45 to 75, a 12-week programme that added 3,000 steps or a 30-minute walk on 5 or more days a week, sent by post or with a nurse, added about 650 steps a day and about 35 minutes a week of moderate activity at 12 months, still about 650 steps at 3 years, and was followed by fewer heart events and fractures over 4 years, though the numbers of events were small.
Simple step counters help: across trials, they added about 1,100 steps a day at up to 4 months and about 460 at a year, and pedometers did at least as well as trackers and apps. Users of the free NHS Active 10 app walked about 9 more brisk minutes a day on the day they downloaded it, which slowly faded but stayed above where they started. Walking with others helps too: Ramblers Wellbeing Walks are free, short led walks across England, starting at 10 minutes.
A slope makes a walk harder without walking faster: at the same speed, a 5% slope took about half as much energy again as the flat, and a 10% slope about double, in 16 adults. Walking down steep slopes loads the knees much more than the flat, so take descents slowly.
The guidelines also ask for strength work for all the major muscles on at least 2 days a week, which walking doesn't count towards. For bone, walking counts as low-impact exercise: Age UK says it can help prevent osteoporosis, but the Royal Osteoporosis Society and the UK consensus advise strength exercise and, if you have no spinal fractures, moderate impacts too. Our beginner workout plan fits around the walks.
Most people can start walking without a check: the World Health Organization says a medical check is generally unnecessary before activity no harder than brisk walking for people without a reason to avoid it. The PAR-Q+ (the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire for Everyone) is a quick way to see whether that's you. Check first, or start somewhere else, if this applies to you:
Our suggestions for common situations:
It's a good start: walking programmes of 4 weeks or more improved fitness and blood pressure, and walking groups added about 80 metres to a 6-minute walk. Keep going afterwards: in a UK trial, people who did a 12-week walking programme were still walking more 3 years later.
No guideline sets a number. More steps go with a lower risk of death up to about 6,000 to 8,000 a day over 60 and 8,000 to 10,000 under 60, so this challenge adds 1,000 to 2,000 steps to your own average.
No. The figure traces to a slogan, the benefits for mortality level off below it for many people, and goals built on your own recent steps held up better than a fixed 10,000 in a small trial.
Briskly: about 3 miles an hour, or fast enough that you can talk but not sing. That's about 100 steps a minute for most adults.
Not much from walking alone: about 0.05 kg a week in walking programmes, so roughly 0.2 kg in a month. Eating a little less does most of the work, and longer, more frequent walks help more over time.
Your fitness and blood pressure start to improve and walks feel easier, while your weight changes little on its own. Walking programmes lowered blood pressure by about 3.6/1.5 mmHg.
A social media trend of walking for 60 minutes at 6am or 6pm, with 6-minute warm-ups and cool-downs. The guidelines don't set a time of day: they count brisk minutes whenever you do them, in bouts of any length, so an hour a day is plenty but not required.
Yes. A treadmill, the stairs or our low-impact cardio workout all work, and a 5% slope makes the same speed about half as hard again.
Often, after checking. With diabetes on insulin, carry something sugary and check your feet; with a heart condition, ask your GP before the faster bouts; and legs that ache when you walk need a GP first. A 10-minute walk after meals lowered blood sugar more than one daily walk in people with type 2 diabetes.
Start our walking plan at week 5, which builds to 150 minutes a week with intervals, hills and two strength days. Or join a free Ramblers Wellbeing Walk, or start running with Couch to 5K.
A general plan for adults without symptoms or restrictions, not a prescription. Start lighter than you think, stop for sharp or increasing pain, numbness, chest pain, faintness or unusual breathlessness, and get individual advice if you are pregnant, after an injury or surgery, or managing a health condition. Health disclaimer.